InDesign crashes during cross-reference insertion

[Nedlaw]

Hi. Using ID 19.3 under Win 11.

This post is in the nature of a work-around rather than an actual question, but any comments that help me figure this out and prevent the situation from occurring are always welcome. This issue has occurred with previous versions of ID and I've never figured out why or seen a solution, but the work-around continues to save the day.

Here is the scenario: I'm working on a file. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. I realize that I must add a cross-reference earlier in the file to an existing head that appears later in the document. I jump up to the earlier place to insert the Xref, bring up the Xref dialog... and ID crashes and closes. (And yes, I send in crash reports.)

On restart, I try again to insert the Xref at the point I wanted to previously... but ID crashes when I bring up the Xref dialog. I've learned that trying this again is fruitless. Something has corrupted the file. I save to an incremented file name, I save to an IDML file, I restart ID, I open the IDML file by itself (not as part of the book or from the book panel) and save it as an incremented INDD file name. I try to do the Xref again... and ID crashes.

In searching the forum, I've found suggestions about replacing corrupted fonts (I have deleted and re-installed fonts both through CC and into Windows | Fonts directly in hopes that this will help; I am not mixing font types). But the crashing still occurs. I know of no way to see into the file to determine what may have been corrupted.

HOWEVER, I have found that I can work around the situation by:

1. Entering a few carriage returns at the end of the paragraph preceding the one where my Xref insertion apparently caused the crash.
2. Retyping the offending paragraph. (What's 50 words to get a file back?)
3. Deleting the old text including its paragraph marker.

At that point, I have been able to re-do the cross-reference where I originally wanted it in the retyped paragraph, and the Xref then works as expected. I can continue working. I generally have no problem with the file after that point.

It appears that something gets corrupted at the file level and whatever that corruption is does not respond to being saved as IDML and re-loaded. It appears to be highly localized to wherever I'm trying to insert the Xref, because deleting that text and retyping seems to fix the corruption. (The Xref insertion point is almost always at the paragraph marker because I'm in the process of writing.) I have wrestled with this several times over the past couple of years. Never frequently, but always at a cross-reference. The problem has spanned several versions of ID and Windows updates. I really don't think it's a computer problem because random file corruption would occur elsewhere if this was so (and with other programs) rather than only with Xrefs; I think it's something inside of ID and it has survived version updates. It is not reproducible. It happens when it happens and with no warning.

As I say, the work-around works, at least for me, but I'd love your suggestions on how to avoid the problem going forward. 

Thanks as always to the community.

-j

[Eugene Tyson]

Strange one 

I can think of a few things

Recompose all text - found a nice article here

http://blog.gilbertconsulting.com/2014/02/force-indesign-to-recompose.html

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Another thing to try is to find out what side of the document it is failing on. It might have nothing to do with the location of the crash, although it's highly suspect it is that exact location.

Faster way - You can divide and conquer - which is prefered than going page by page - which would be delete pages content 1-5 first - then try - then try 6-9 

Which ever side it crashes on that's where the problem truly lies.

It might not be a previous page - but it might be a page after page 10 - so try going that direction too.

It could be anything, an anchored image, a text frame, a table, an image corrupt, a font, a style etc.

You can try divide and conquer by removing info until it the crash doesn't happen.

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Mentioned in the article is the Smart Text Reflow - you might want to see if this is on or off or if it's causing 'havoc'.  If it's off then it's probably not responsible, but who knows.

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Another method is to start a new document with same page size and margins.

With the old document open and the new document open - go to the old document

In the Pages panel use the sub menu and choose Move Pages

You can then move all the pages from the Old Document to the target being the New Document

This is technically move the content to the new document, but rebuild content holders, like text frames, image frames, tables, etc. and it might remove the minor corruption.

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I think your best bet is the divide and conquer and track down the pesky item or object that is sending InDesign to a spin. 

[Nedlaw]

Thanks for the excellent debugging ideas. The problem does not appear to be finding the location of the corruption -- re-typing the offending paragraph and deleting the old version through its paragraph marker seems to do the trick and allows me to enter the intended cross-reference where I wanted to do so.

The problem apparently comes out of nowhere, on an otherwise correctly operating file. I try to do an Xref and - pow - with no indication that anything is wrong. It may be an horizon condition in the Xref code of running ID. Maybe I have left ID running too long on the computer (even though files are regularly saved and closed and reopened) and some memory reallocation (garbage collection) routine is not as efficient as it might be. Basically, I don't know.

But I do know how to work around it.

Thanks again.

-j

[Eugene Tyson]

As I said - just because it randomly crashes during a specific operation, the problem could lay on any page at all with any object, text, style etc. 

It's good you found a way to work around it - and if you ever did revisit the ultimate 'why' I hope these steps are of some use.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about the trouble. If it happens again, please you can also try the suggestions shared in this discussion. 

Thanks

Rishabh